Taizhou Stories Around the World | Chinese scientist advances Brazil-China cooperation in scientific computing

Editor's Note: Over the past three decades, since Taizhou was established as a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu, tens of thousands of people from the city have ventured abroad in pursuit of their dreams, making their mark in business, science, technology, culture and other fields. The "Taizhou Stories Around the World" series shares the stories of Taizhou natives who have built careers abroad and contributed to global exchanges.

Zhu Jiang. [Photo/WeChat account: tzwq2018]

For more than two decades, Chinese scientist Zhu Jiang has combined his research career in Brazil with a sustained effort to deepen academic ties between the two countries.

Zhu graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Shandong University in 1982 and continued his postgraduate studies there before joining the faculty at Southeast University in 1985. He later moved to Brazil on a full scholarship. He earned a PhD in computer science from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1995, completing the program a year early.

In 2000, Zhu joined Brazil's National Laboratory of Scientific Computation after ranking first in the recruitment process. He remains the only Chinese national to have served as a federal civil servant under Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

As a research team leader at Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Zhu has led several nationally funded research projects, making pioneering contributions to applied mathematics and scientific computing.

His work has also gone well beyond the laboratory. Since 2000, he has made numerous visits to top Chinese universities and research institutes for academic exchanges and lectures, while building long-term collaborations in research and postgraduate training.

Together with Brazilian scientific leader Luiz Bevilacqua and other prominent scientists from both countries, Zhu also helped establish a bilateral cooperation mechanism in scientific computing.